Society

Friday

David Blackburn

Dirty tricks are off and running

The Tories are bracing themselves for an election campaign of smears and dirty tricks. Today the sniping begins. Attack dog Liam Byrne has criticised Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ speech in the following terms: “I think when people read what Mr Cameron is saying today they will see that it is quite an unpleasant speech…Mr Cameron is seizing upon one appalling crime and almost tarring the people of Doncaster and the people of Britain.” Cameron is not tarring anyone; he is clear that Doncaster was one of a number of extreme incidents (Baby P being another) that exist alongside a groundswell of anti-social behaviour. The terms ‘Broken Britain’ and ‘moral recession’ are

Thursday

David Blackburn

Poor communication is damaging the Afghan mission

He may be a chateau-bottled shyster, but there is no better communicator of policy than Alastair Campbell. He has penned an article in the FT arguing that the lesson that should have been learned from the Iraq war was how to communicate strategic ideas and objectives. The lack of clarity that came to define Iraq now afflicts Afghanistan: ‘It was hard to discern that approach in the run-up to the Afghan surge being announced, or after it. The surge should have been followed by co-ordinated communications across the alliance. That job is not being done with the vigour and consistency that it should, and the systems of co-ordination have weakened

The Spectator

In this week’s Spectator | 21 January 2010

The latest issue of the Specatator is published today. If you are a subscriber you can view it here. If you have not subscribed, but would like to view this week’s content, you can subscribe online here, or purchase a single issue here. A selection of articles from the latest issue is available for free online to all website users: Labour’s Green Paper on families makes it clear that the party is opposed to promoting marriage. Ferdinand Mount says it’s crucial that the Tories don’t waver, but stick to their promise of a financial incentive. It is not often that David Cameron lavishes praise on a Labour achievement. But that’s

Peter Hoskin

Shining a light into government

I wouldn’t normally start the day by linking to a public sector website – but this one is actually worth your time.  It’s the launch version of data.gov.uk, created with the help of Tim Berners-Lee among others, which aims to present statistics about government performance in a straightforward, easy-to-access way.  You’ll get a sense of what’s there by rummaging around this page: there’s stuff on benefits, deaths, immigration, traffic, and so on. Ok, so it’s not perfect.  You’d hardly call the current crop of data exhaustive, and you could complain that much of it was available previously if you knew where to look for it.  But this is the earliest

Wednesday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle: Enemy Of The People

There’s a few Early Day Motions in the House of Commons, one of which demands that I should not be made editor of the Independent newspaper, based upon a Guardian story that I was about to be. There are two signatories – the self-publicising, hypocritical pantomime dame Diane Abbott, with whom I have crossed swords before, and the Labour MP for Newport, Paul Flynn. Now, there aren’t very many MPs for whom I have enormous respect, but Flynn is one of them – free thinking, leftish, not afraid to say the unpopular thing, fundamentally decent. So I rang him to moan about the EDM and he said that he’d signed

The Spectator

Win a case of wine with the Spectator survey

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve Spectator.co.uk, we’d like to know a bit more about you, our readers, and why you visit the site. So, if you’ve got ten to fifteen minutes to spare, please click here to take the Spectator survey. As a thank you for taking part, your name will be included in a draw to win a case of wine courtesy of the Spectator Wine Club. Three winners will be announced when the survey closes in two weeks time. Good luck.

Peter Hoskin

The worries behind falling unemployment

Expect Labour to make much of today’s employment figures, which show that unemployment fell by 7,000 in the three months to last November.  Already, Yvette Cooper has claimed it as a success for “government investment”.  While Gordon Brown will surely repeat that message in PMQs. But is it really testament to government action?  Or is it a result of a naturally improving economy (which, let’s not forget, is taking longer in the UK than most other developed nations)?  Well, a study commissioned by the Spectator from Oxford Economics found that Brown’s “investment” would “save” around 35,000 jobs in 2009 – but then destroy considerably more jobs from this year on. 

David Blackburn

Drink isn’t the curse of the working classes, but its easy availability is

It must be stated from the outset – most drinkers are responsible and drink only on special occasions, with other people or by themselves. However, binge drinkers, or that caste of drinker whose evening is neatly rounded-off with a stomach pump, are a minority, albeit a growing one. Relaxed licensing laws and the government’s refusal to strong-arm the drinks industry have led to roving bands of Sally Bercows traversing town centres, and who end the night by falling out of their dresses and into a taxi, or onto a pavement. Readily available alcohol has over-stretched the NHS’ dwindling A&E resources and the police’s time – Alice Thompson discloses that alcohol

James Forsyth James Forsyth

In a major blow to Obama, Democrats lose Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat

In a stunning result, the Republicans last night won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in a special election in Massachusetts. The defeat is a major blow to President Obama as he begins the second year of his presidency. The loss means that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, calling into question whether the healthcare bill—the domestic centrepiece of Obama’s first year in office—can pass. If a year ago, anyone had said that Obama’s first year in the White House would end with the Democrats losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts you would have assumed that something had gone very wrong. The defeat does show

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

King warns the spending bingers that ‘markets can be unforgiving’

Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, is giving a speech tonight at Exeter University. King, as you would expect, avoids getting into politics. But one passage is attracting interest in Conservative circles: “Of course, there is a perfectly sensible debate about the appropriate timing of the withdrawal of the temporary fiscal stimulus as the economy recovers. Some has in fact already been withdrawn with the return of the standard rate of VAT to 17.5% at the beginning of the month. But uncertainty about how and when fiscal policy will respond has a direct bearing on monetary policy. And markets can be unforgiving. As Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Losing in Massachusetts

It is a sign of the problems that Obama is having that on the eve of the anniversary of his inauguration, the Democrats look like losing Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts. To put it in context, this is a bit like Labour losing Sunderland Central in a by-election. There are a whole host of reasons why the Democrats might lose this seat: an unappealing candidate, how few things Obama has actually delivered, the cost of the health-care bill, the fact Massachusetts, basically, already has universal health care. But this along with the Democrats losing in governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey shows that it is just an

David Blackburn

Geoff Hoon, silent assassin

And so it came to pass that nothing came to pass. Geoff Hoon gave evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on the same day as a convention of anaesthetists visited the QE Conference Centre. Perhaps their presence contributed to the somnolent proceedings. Beneath the apparent narcolepsy, Hoon made two important points. First, he was convinced that the intelligence contained in the two dossiers established the threat of WMD “beyond doubt”, which will assist Blair when he gives evidence, especially after Alastair Campbell’s recent ‘clarification’. However, Hoon claims that the 45-minute claim was the only piece of evidence that he had not seen prior to publication, adding that he was on ministerial

Peter Hoskin

Darling struggles to find consistency

Alistair Darling’s got an interview in today’s FT, and you know the story by now.  Yep, the government thinks that borrowing needs to come down drastically; extra growth would go towards cutting the structural deficit; there’ll be the “toughest settlement” on public spending for twenty years, only it shouldn’t be introduced too quickly; those bankers aren’t quite as evil as previously suggested; and so on and so on.  As we’ve said before, it’s certainly an improvement on that fatuous investment-vs-cuts line.  But you’ve got to wonder whether the public will find it credible, in view of what Brown & Co. have said, and done, in the past. Reading the complete

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Bill McLaren 1923-2010

He’d been ill for some time, so the news that Bill McLaren, the “Voice of Rugby” has died is sad but neither surprising nor shocking. For nearly half a century, from his debut in 1953 until 2002, his voice dominated the game. No other rugby commentator came close. Nor, in this multi-channel age, will any again. The voice – a mild Hawick burr – was only part of what made McLaren so distinctive. McLaren’s commentary combined great colour with precision. He gave viewers a sense of the drama of the game and relished the physical confrontation that lies at the heart of rugby and without which it is, if not

David Blackburn

The not so steady creep of inflation

As Mark Bathgate and Fraser warned, the economic crisis now has an added dimension: inflation. The government’s preferred marker, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose to 2.9 percent in December from 1.9 percent in November, which as Andrew Neil notes is the biggest monthly rise in the annual index since records began. And the Retail Prices Index (RPI), used to calculate welfare payments and wage re-negotiations, rose to 2.4 percent from 0.3 percent. The underlying RPI rate rose to 3.8 percent from 2.7 percent.  We are now seeing the long-term effects of Quantitative Easing and the use of debt to finance further government borrowing. A consequence of printing money is

Alex Massie Alex Massie

More Booze-Related Fraud

To return to a subject we considered the other day, it seems there’s no end to the mendacity ministers are prepared to endorse if it furthers their efforts to tell everyone how to lead their lives. The latest ploy is to argue that the fact that the average Scot consumes 12.2 litres of pure alcohl every year demonstrates that politicians should be allowed to fix alcohol prices. This figure amounts, we are told, to 46 bottles of vodka a year. Well that doesn’t sound all that much, does it? That’s a single bottle a week with a dry spell lasting from New Years Day to St Valentines Day. Alternatively, it

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Making social reform affordable

Last week we heard that the Tory leadership are considering limiting their £20-a-week marriage tax break to make the policy more affordable.  And, today, Iain Duncan Smith outlines just how that might work.  In his latest report for the Centre for Social Justice, he sets out a range of costings for the policy: For all married couples: £3.2 billion For married couples with dependent children or in receipt of Carers Allowance: £1.5bn For married couples with children under 6: £0.9bn For married couples with children aged 0-3, the most important years for a child’s development: £0.6bn It’s the final option, costing £600 million, that the Tories are said to be

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall 18 January – 24 January

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local

Mark Bathgate

Three steps to cleaning up our toxic banks

Fraser outlined the problem with the British banks in his earlier post, but I’d like to suggest a three-step solution.   1. To deal with the problem, you have to admit to the problem. This is the First Step for Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step plan but holds true for politics. Say it out loud: the banking system is still broken. It needs fixed, and the process won’t be pretty. There will always be a political temptation to turn a blind eye, as there was in Japan during its ‘lost decade’. 2. Use an objective and credible third party to analyse the ability of banks to withstand losses, and to go

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Essence of Palinism

Commenting on Sarah Palin here, regular correspondent Snowman does us all a favour by distilling Palinism to its essence: Tell me, if you will, what is it that irks you that much? If she is that of a comedian, why does she make you madder than the dogs, ha? You reckon the great unwashed of America have to told by the likes of you what to think of her? Why? Do you possess the capacity to tell us how to rate politicians, how to think, how to live our lives? Isn’t ‘hopeandchange’ equally glib? Glibness happens to be the trademark of any political rhetoric, it’s the art of talking a